NO B.S. FRIDAY: How to win a room

A trip to the local council reminded me of some basic persuasion techniques.

So this week I went along with a friend to his council’s community access session.

He wouldn’t appreciate me going in to all the specifics here, but basically, he needed to go and lobby the councillors directly to get them to delay considering his D.A.

He had gotten word that his D.A was going to get knocked back, because he had these koala friendly trees on his property that he wasn’t aware of when he first put his DA together.

“Koalas?” I said. “Don’t you live alongside and freeway?

“Yep, and there’s pitbulls to the north and 3 cockerspaniels to the south. We haven’t seen a koala in over 20 years.”

But that’s the way DAs work. You’ve just got to jump through the hoops.

Anyway, I went along with him – mostly for moral support – but also because I’ve been through this process more than a few times, and maybe I’d be able to answer any questions he couldn’t.

Anyway, we get there, and there’s two hours allocated to community access, and there’s about 40 people on the list to speak.

Oh my god. I’m looking around the room and already I’m sizing people up. There’s the ex-councilors who are very long in the tooth now, but miss the days when they had something meaningful to do.

Then there’s the obvious cranks. (Why do crazy guys always have crazy hair? Is it part of the job description?) They’ve obviously been working very hard on their presentations because they haven’t found the time to shave or find clean pants.

And then there’s a mish-mash of local business owners and residents, coming along for the first time, and generally looking like they’re out of their depth.

And then there’s the councillors themselves, gritting their teeth and bracing themselves for the onslaught that was obviously about to hit them.

And it was seriously on like donkey-kong once it started.

Crazy pants guy is first cab off the rank and he’s speaking to the plans for a new waste-water treatment. Well he wastes no time going straight to “dereliction of duty”, “abuse of trust” and “legacy of lies and deceits”.

And I couldn’t even tell if he was for or against what was on the table.

Next there was a local cafe owner who had been asked to move his tables of the public side-walk. From what I gathered the previous owner had told him that he was allowed to have tables on the sidewalk, but that just wasn’t the case. But now, this was council’s responsibility and if they were forcing him to move, then he was going straight to the land and environment court.

The there was an ex-councilor. I have no idea what he was talking about. He was reading a prepared statement off a piece of paper, and it was full of technical terms about this that and the other.

In fact, come to think about it, pretty much everyone was reading off a prepared statement.

Now I’m watching the councillors, and they genuinely looking like they’re doing their best to keep up, but it’s obviously wearing on them. Within an hour they’ve been called everything from incompetent to corrupt, and that’s just from the presentations you could actually follow.

They were getting that glazed look in their eye.

I lean over and ask my mate what he was planning to stay.

He shows me the statement he’s prepared. It’s two full A4 pages of size 12 font.

“What? You’re going to say all that? In 5 minutes?”

“Yeah, I’ll read quickly.”

I’m like, “Mate, no way. I’m telling you that’s not going to work. Do you mind if I speak for you?”

He was reluctant but he comes round.

So when our time comes I get up and take the mic, and I look the councillors in the eye and say:

“Look, we’re just here to ask for a delay on the decision for the development application relating to such and such a property.”

“We’ve been working closely with the council planners, and that’s been great, they’re all very professional, but it’s come to our attention that there are some issues with koala habitat that we weren’t aware of when we first put the DA together, so we’d just like a little extra time to make sure we’re doing everything right.

So yeah, if you could delay the decision on such and such a property, we’d really appreciate that.

Thanks very much.”

And then I sat down.

At that point, I had every councillors eyes on me. I had their attention.
Mostly I think they were amazed that someone had only used 40 seconds of their allocated 5 minutes. An hour and a half in to community access that would have felt like a gift from God.

But I was speaking to them as people. I was conversational, I was “off-script”. That made my message easy to hear.

(I actually can’t think of a situation where you’re better off reading a prepared statement… maybe in court. Or maybe when you’re fronting the media to explain why you’re entire first division side has failed their drug test. But generally, that paper locks you up, it makes you sound like a robot, and it makes your message very difficult to receive.)

The other thing I did is I brought myself inside the tent. I didn’t set it up as some sort of adversarial show-down. This comes from face to face marketing. If you have to argue the merits of your product, if you’re in an argument with your customer, you’ve lost the sale.

So I made it very clear that we were happy, we were friendly. We just wanted this little procedural thing to move things along. Easy easy.

Seriously, if you start off with, “I’d like to remind councillors of the oath they took when they took office, which they seem to have forgotten….” how far are you really going to get?

If you cast someone as the enemy, then they’re never going to agree to what you’re saying, no matter what it is.

I would have thought all this was obvious, but after this week’s meeting, I had to wonder.

Oh, and the other technique there is top and tailing. I said up front what we wanted, so everything that followed had a context. And I ended with it so it was left there in their minds.

Anyway, long story short, we got what we wanted. I don’t know how much help I actually was – it was a pretty reasonable request to begin with – but I’m fairly sure my mate’s 2 page epic wouldn’t have helped things.

And I just thought I’d share this. I thought these techniques of persuasion were pretty obvious, but after listening to a dozen accusation-filled rants, I did start to wonder.

Rule 1 – get on the right side of the fence.

Sometimes it’s as easy as being the only friendly (and sane) voice in a room.

you exceed yourself! what a masterpiece. dale carnegie would be proud of you! i laughed all the way through. friendly persuasion is all about winning anything and everything. yes, councillors do get a belting from the local constituents, some very deservedly others doing their best for no pay at all, but maybe seeking some influence. our local melville city councillors are creating a rod for their own backs in a thing called the ‘wave park’, hoping to desecrate riverside land of great environmental significance. the vote was 8 -5 for it. it caused a tsunami of protest from many thousands of residents far and wide.

now it has reached the steps of state parliament. all sorts of allegations are leveled at the doings of the mayor, city manager, lots of clericals at the council and of course the other 7 councillors who have voted for it. it is in short a miasma of corruption and greed.

well thats it for today. cheers, jonno

ron from west oz.

ron goddard

oh sorry..a tip for persuasion of councillors? none, other than stand for election is the only way i think. then you can do it behind closed doors. easy. cheers, ron

Colin

Jon, What a great lesson in getting the audiences attention, being remembered for next time, while getting what you want in a 100 words. Thanks.

Unfortunately Ange didn’t get what he wanted did he? But the Maroons did by sticking to the plan.

Macca

Love it Jon. I use those exact techniques 5 times a day. Difficult conversation at work? Keep it simple, open up like you’re their friend, empathise, listen, then quietly ask for what you need. Done.
Complex customer service request? Be super polite, very gentle, and very clear. Ask them what the weathers’ like in Manila today. Done. Aggro, volume, and droning on are the biggest obstacles to operating effectively. But it’s amazing how few people have really tuned in to that.

Brendan

Local council’s over in Tassie are pretty relaxed and the planners are always available to chat to and very helpful. With all my DA’s my strategy has been, pour on the honey when interacting with them and follow the planning rules and there is never a problem!

Terri

Great stuff Jon, sweet and simple. Have a curly one for you if you’re up for the challenge. DA just about to be approved – complimented on our design of 28 x 3 story town homes – surrounded by park on 3 sides. So now council have decided to acquire our site to add it to the already large park. We can only assume so far, the battle of the valuation methodology is going to put us to the test along with huge holding costs and having our hands tied very tight. Will be interesting to say the least. Cheers

Kiwi

Hey Jonno,

I like this one! You make it sound so easy…

How would you deal with this? Silly question, I’m sure. You’d just pay it, right?

Last week, I received a “mystery” envelope in the mail. Didn’t recognise where it was from or what it was.

Opened it to find a Notice of Parking Fine. Surprised, because I never found a parking ticket on my car.

Turns out, it was a $150 fine. “Parking” in a Disabled Parking Space. Never done that, ever, in my memory.

We had to think hard to remember what we did two or three weeks back, at that location, but we guessed correctly. It’s outside the local Library. My wife had a big pile of books to return. A whole armful, about 10 or so. No other empty spots nearby, so pulled in to the Disabled spot to let her out and load up with books. Then moved to a park much further away. No Disabled parkers came by during that time, and I would have moved immediately anyway.

Reading the notice carefully, see that I was “Parked” from 10:09:10 to 10:09:34. Yep, that’s 24 seconds. Doubt I even got out of the car, unless it was to help stack the books in wife’s arms. (Don’t recall that on this day, but I know I have done that on one occasion. My wife is currently studying, so tends to borrow lots of books.)

Still waiting to find out how they pulled this off – whether they have hidden cameras, or what!

Read the relevant law and bylaw. Defines “Parking” as “stopping or standing a vehicle” so, legally, they can do it, but really…? Pure money making.

Even more interesting, I could double-park, park on the footpath, on a traffic island, over a fire hydrant, across a driveway, on a pedestrian crossing, on broken yellow lines, just about anywhere else, obstructing EVERYONE and creating a genuine danger to traffic and people, for $60 or less.

It’s ridiculous. Guess where I’m gonna stop next time?

Do you think sweetness and light would help here?

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